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Saturday, September 6, 2014

The IS-Kurdish War, by Jonathan Spyer

"Eighty years ago, they joined three nations together and formed
Iraq. This mistake must not be repeated … The solution is a breakup,"
says General Maghdid Haraki.
The Kurdish peshmerga officer is speaking from the front lines in
Khazar, northern Iraq. His position is only 45 kilometres northwest of
Erbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish regional government (KRG),
which along with Sunni and Shiite Arab lands makes up modern Iraq.

Today, not only the existence of Iraq is in jeopardy. So is the
existence of the KRG itself, assailed by the Islamic State of Iraq &
Al-Sham (ISIS), whose harsh brand of Islam is terrifying locals and
appalling the world.
A single war between ISIS and the Kurds is now under way, stretching
along an enormous front line from Jalawla, near the Iraq-Iran border,
all the way to Jarabulus on the frontier between Syria and Turkey.
On the jihadi side of the line, the Iraqi-Syrian border no longer
exists. ISIS now controls huge swaths of Syria and Iraq, and will
continue to do so unless and until it is destroyed.
After their lightning advance from Mount Sinjar in early August, the
jihadis have dug in on three sides of Erbil. Facing them are Gen. Haraki
and the peshmerga.
The front lines are quiet for now, mainly because U.S. air strikes
Aug. 8 stemmed the Islamists' headlong rush toward the Kurdish capital.
But the general and his men know the quiet is likely to be only
transient.
To reach Erbil, ISIS forces would have to advance over bare, flat
ground. Were they to attempt this, the Kurds would request the help of
the Americans and the ISIS force would be obliterated. ISIS knows this,
too. Hence the strange and sullen silence.
Nevertheless, Erbil remains tense. The city is swollen with refugees —
Chaldean Christians from Mosul, Yezidis from the Sinjar area — who
understand all too well what any jihadi advance would mean for them,
non-Muslim minorities who were smart or lucky enough to get away in
time.
They are living in tent encampments in open areas of Erbil and in the
half-built grey structures that characterize this place, which had the
feel of a boom town until fairly recently.
Now, the bars and restaurants catering for foreigners are largely
empty. Employees of the big foreign oil firms and consular staff left
hurriedly when the jihadis seemed to be about to descend. Many residents
also fled.
ISIS has not forgotten Erbil. A terror campaign has begun here. There
are mysterious explosions of a type familiar to residents of Iraqi
cities further south. Last week, a car bomb ripped through a central
neighbourhood, wounding several people.
But Kurdish forces are hunkering down, facing the jihadis with grim
determination. With the help of U.S. air cover and Iraqi special fores,
they are beginning to reconquer some of the areas lost. Most
significantly, these include oilfields near Mosul, retaken this week,
and the Mosul Dam, which provides water and electricity for much of
northern Iraq.
The Kurds are well aware of what an ISIS victory would mean. After
the jihadis took the Mount Sinjar area (Shinghal in Kurdish), they
unleashed a series of atrocities that shocked even this most hardened of
lands.
At the fly-blown Newroz refugee camp in northern Syria, Yezidi
refugees described what happened when ISIS fighters appeared in their
villages near the mountain and the peshmerga fled.
"We tried to withdraw all the women and kids from the village. People
who could get to the mountains were safe, people who stayed were
killed," said Kawa, 30, who was lucky enough to escape with some of his
family.
The refugees' bitterness at their abandonment by the peshmerga
remains raw and palpable. But still more tangible is the sense of stark
horror as they recall the jihadis' actions.
"When ISIS came to the village, they took all the women, and any man
who could hold a weapon was slaughtered. Now they are selling Yezidi
women for $5 in the slave market in Mosul," Kawa says.
"My parents were too old and sick to come with us, and we had to
leave them. We don't know what has happened to them. Also, some people
didn't have fuel for their cars, and those ones couldn't get to the
mountain."
The man and his family were among the lucky ones, rescued by members
of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Turkish Kurds, who led them to
safety in Syria.
The peshmerga's failure to hold the line at Sinjar was a shock, both
for observers and inhabitants of Kurdish northern Iraq. Gen. Haraki
blames it on the help afforded ISIS by local Sunni Arabs.
In this regard, at least, he is in agreement with the refugees at Newroz.
"Our neighbours in Iraq became our enemies, and killed us," says Kawa's wife.
But the peshmerga's initial failure was not only the product of local
Sunni support for ISIS. These once-vaunted fighters had not taken part
in combat for 20 years. Deprived of modern equipment by the
Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and the West, which remains
suspicious of Kurdish separatist ambitions, they found themselves
outgunned and initially outfought by the jihadi blitzkrieg.
But, as the refugees' testimony suggests, other Kurdish forces
appeared at Mount Sinjar mountain — the ragged and formidable fighters
of the Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units) militia from Syria and
PKK guerrillas from Turkey.
Armed only with Kalashnikovs and light machine guns, but with much
combat experience, these fighters succeeded in opening a road from
Sinjar up to Jezza, Rumeilan and then to the refugee camp outside Derik.
Tens of thousands of lives may have been saved because of this action.
The YPG and ISIS are old acquaintances. The Kurds have been battling
the jihadis since late 2012 to maintain two Kurdish-controlled enclaves
on the border between Syria and Turkey, Jazeera and Kobani.
ISIS has been notably unsuccessful in its efforts to make progress in this little-reported front of the Syrian war.
The opening of the corridor from Mount Sinjar was the most notable achievement yet for the YPG/PKK.
It indicates that, for all their undoubted fanaticism, the jihadis
are not invincible and can be turned back when met by equal commitment
and greater skill.
On the Kurdish side, the peshmerga and the YPG, and their very
different political masters are for now allied in the face of the common
threat. They sense both threat and opportunity in the break-up of Syria
and Iraq.
The threat can be seen 45 km outside of the KRG capital, in the silent but glowering positions of the Islamic State.
The opportunity, meanwhile, is that Kurdish sovereignty has already
emerged as a more benign successor entity in a contiguous line across
the old border — and Kurdish forces are today the only ones engaged in
earnest against a savage force universally acknowledged to constitute an
enemy of humanity.
Gen. Haraki's statement a break-up of Iraq represents the solution
may well be heard more widely and insistently in the months ahead. This
is a war to create new borders, and to hold back the advance of a
savagery not seen in the Middle East for a generation.

Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a Jerusalem-based journalist and researcher.